Boogie Nights
Paul Thomas Anderson, USA, 1997o
Set in 1977, back when sex was safe, pleasure was a business and business was booming, idealistic porn producer Jack Horner aspires to elevate his craft to an art form. Horner discovers Eddie Adams, a hot young talent working as a busboy in a nightclub, and welcomes him into the extended family of movie-makers, misfits and hangers-on that are always around. Adams' rise from nobody to a celebrity adult entertainer is meteoric, and soon the whole world seems to know his porn alter ego, "Dirk Diggler". Now, when disco and drugs are in vogue, fashion is in flux and the party never seems to stop, Adams' dreams of turning sex into stardom are about to collide with cold, hard reality. (TMDB)
Anderson's second feature - a dazzling, highly confident, atmospherically original and refreshingly non-prurient take on the LA porn movie community - may not be a '90s Citizen Kane, as some claim, but in terms of sweep, ambition and precocious cinematic competence, it heralds the arrival of a new talent. Charting the rise and fall of well-endowed teenage ingénu Dirk Diggler (Wahlberg), from dishwasher to subcultural skinflick superstar, and back to washed-out junkie, the film is less a cautionary tale than a freewheeling, talent-showcasing homage to the glitter, tack and kitsch excesses of the drug-fuelled late '70s and the hangover '80s. The sense of homage/pastiche goes further still: if the rambling ensemble construction derives from Nashville, the swooping long takes and whiplash pans come courtesy of Scorsese. But it's the music that calls the tune with the energetic soul and disco records of the period dictating the editing, pacing and the slightly sleazy, morally neutral tone. This is style condescending magnificently to content, but what stiffens this unashamedly exhibitionist movie's muscles are the 'family' of beautifully judged performances, from Reynolds' stand-out as porn-king auteur/father figure, to Moore's superb cokehead survivor-star and Macy's humiliated cuckold, right down to Hoffman's gut-wrenching gay crew member.
wh.Aufstieg und Fall eines jungen Pornodarstellers zwischen Ende der 70er und Anfang der 80er Jahre. Umgeben von einem Filmteam, das einen familiären Zusammenhalt bietet, steigt ein junger Mann zum Topstar der Branche auf, bis ihn Drogensucht und Größenwahn sowie nachrückende Jungdarsteller verdrängen. Auch einige seiner Wegbegleiter suchen verzweifelt ein Leben außerhalb der Branche. Stilistisch versetzt sich der Film geschickt in die filmischen Moden jener Zeit und entwirft das schillernde Bild einer Epoche, die ein Leben in Libertinage außerhalb bürgerlicher Schranken propagierte. Ein in seiner Thematik und seiner Einlassung darauf gewiß kein unumstrittener, auf menschlicher Ebene aber durchaus bewegender Film, der bemüht ist, das Porno-Gewerbe weder zu diskreditieren noch zu verteidigen, sondern seine Macher mit ihren Lebensträumen nicht zuletzt als Symptome ihrer Zeit versteht.
N.N.Galleryo
